Beautiful Trash
by Alexis.Danaan
Summary: She took it upon herself to become his friend. Or something. A story in 3 parts. Rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1

**Beautiful Trash**

_You look, you look like trouble._

_You look like, beautiful trash._

_You look, look so, holy through the smoke and the ash._

_Oh, beautiful trash._

**Part 1/3**

1.

She's never known what to make of him. Never known how to read him. It's a small comfort that there's no one left alive who does. Perhaps McGonagall, but she has never forgiven him for what he'd done and no longer counts in that regard.

There was a time when she thought she wouldn't, either. There was a time when she thought she could have stood before him, wand raised, and cast the one curse that would removed him as a problem.

Luckily, she'd never had the opportunity.

Secrets exposed meant that he'd never been the traitor they'd all assumed, meant that they'd been taken in exactly the way they were supposed to, meant that they'd never had any faith in him to begin with.

When he survived, she was pleased.

When he returned to teaching, Potions at that, she was shocked.

When she replaced Flitwick, his nerves irreparably shot after the war, she was disappointed.

Somehow, after everything that she learned about him between the press and the trial and Harry's late night, alcohol induced confessions, she had expected more from him.

2.

He decided long ago that he would die here. It was fitting, seeing as he'd lived in the castle for the majority of his life.

He'd almost accomplished it.

A miracle, they called it.

Fucking idiots.

When the dust settled and the trials ended, when he was lauded a hero of the Wizarding world, when Potter's declarations of his bravery should have tasted like victory, he was left with only the 'miracle' of his survival and nothing more.

Words. They're so easy to throw out into the world and impossible to take back, but the kicker is that they're only truly effective when they're aimed to hurt.

Mudblood.

He'd said it once. Only once. And it had ruined his life.

They showered him with words, upon words, upon words. Hell, they even gave him a shiny medal that came with _more fucking words_.

But those words never translated into action.

No one wants to hire the infamous ex-Death Eater spy who killed Dumbledore. No one wants to fund his research ideas. No one wants to even acknowledge he exists.

He's only a hero if he's a distant figure, not one they have to deal with on a daily basis and remember that, in reality, he's a bit of a prick.

So he went back to Hogwarts, ready to wait it out.

One day, he'd die here.

3.

Four years after the end of the war, two after she'd joined the staff, and the accumulation of the words he'd said to her outside of "Professor Granger" and "Good evening" could be counted on one hand.

Until now.

He towers over her, his rage palatable as it shivers over her skin and settles at the base of her spine. She arches backwards, trying to keep him fully in sight. His face is twisted into an expression that goes beyond mere anger—it's almost animalistic.

"What do you think you're _doing_?" he hisses, his voice deadly and quiet. "You think that you can waltz into my domain and use whatever you see fit because you're a fucking _hero_ Miss Granger? You think you can _steal from me again_?"

"Now, just wait a second—"

"_I will not wait anymore!"_ He screams it, bellows it, really. His voice at the top of his lungs cracks a bit and spit flies from his mouth. His eyes are wild and furious and...staring straight into them for the first time in _years_ she realises something.

Hurt.

She's hurt him, somehow, but she doesn't understand. He had agreed to her using the lab for her experiment earlier in the week, Minerva had said...

The light clicks on and her eyes fall shut as regret and a not inconsiderable amount of anger washes over her.

"Severus." She murmurs his name. She'd never said his name before. Opening her eyes, she reaches up and places her hands flat on his chest, one right over his furiously thudding heart. "Severus," she says it again, watching his eyes dart wildly between hers. He doesn't take her to task for her familiarity and part of her is shocked.

"There's been a misunderstanding. I thought you knew. I thought you had approved."

He blinks. Once, twice. Like a charm has zapped him out of it, his expression morphs.

Straightening, his face loses all hint of emotion. He turns away from her and stalks back towards his office, out of his private lab.

"Get out."

"Sever—"

"_Get. Out_."

His voice returns to that deadly softness and she knows what it means.

4.

He nearly confronts her. Nearly. He marched halfway up to her office, his heavy boots thundering on the flagstones, his robes practically snapping behind him.

But he doesn't.

He's more of a coward than he'd like to admit, even to himself, but he's never been very good at lying to himself. Everyone else, yes, but never to himself.

He just doesn't have the energy to do it anymore. And he doesn't want to see the hatred in her eyes.

Instead, he invites the little interloper back just to spite the bitch who sent her in the first place.

He suspects that she's playing a game, but he doesn't care.

The expression in _her_ eyes throws him. Gratitude. She understands what happened, what was done to her, and for reasons unknown she doesn't seem to want to take it out on him. The invitation is extended over a Thursday evening dinner at the Head Table and by the next night she's there. In his space.

It's surreal for him. He's never shared this place before, not even with Slughorn when he took over the post that dreadful year.

He doesn't know what to do with her.

She wears brightly coloured robes and he wonders if she's defying his own.

She sings softly under her breath. It irritates him and he tells her to shut up a dozen times a night.

She also dances from place to place, especially when things are going her way. It distracts him.

She sheds like a goddamn cat. He finds her curly hairs _everywhere_.

He takes her to task for leaving behind the perfect opportunity to Polyjuice her. She ought to know better. Hadn't she had enough experience with that particular potion over the years? He watches her grin, the smile spreading over her face as easily as she draws breath. He watches her get smart with him and dare him to do it, to become her. He glares at her and spits out something scathing about her stupidity but she doesn't react.

It frustrates him that she never fucking reacts.

5.

It's just before the New Year when he does it.

In retrospect, she realises that it had been building for quite some time, and the fact that she'd spent the majority of the Christmas Hols in his lab poking and prodding at her experiments probably didn't help.

He snaps at her and for the first time since she was fourteen, he succeeds at making her cry.

It was a careless comment that, had he been aware of her circumstances she was sure he wouldn't have made. He had attacked her about her friends, the two blundering idiots as he often called them, and it had garnered no reaction. They were like her family, bonded through trials and terror rather than blood. Logically, if those comments had rolled off of her like water on oil slicked canvas, so should have this one.

But he hadn't known.

He asks her, quite snidely, why she insisted on forcing her presence on him throughout the break. Was he to have no respite from her? Or did her own parents not want her around? Had she driven them off with her incessant chatter and her terrible singing voice?

She drops the stirring rod she's using.

She watches the potion in her cauldron bubble and knows that it is burning at the bottom. It's ruined. Several hundred galleons worth of ingredients and four weeks of planning gone in an instant.

Without care for how hot the metal is, she picks up the cauldron, strides the two steps it takes to reach the sink and throws the whole thing in.

"Granger—"

She spins around. "Fuck you. Fuck you! _Fuck you!_" Her entire body shakes. Pain races up her arms from her hands. "You think you can just say anything you want? Why? Because everyone expects you to be a fucking bastard!?" She's shrieking, her voice echoing harshly off the walls.

He just stands there, his face expressionless.

"How about rising above their fucking expectations for once in your goddamn life?" She blinks and hot tears spills down her cheeks. "How about you grow the fuck up and deal with your own pain without inflicting it on others?"

She waits. A heartbeat. Two. Three. A handful.

He doesn't say a word. Just stands there, staring at her as if she is a wild creature.

She leaves him there.

***** This is a different style for me, so I'd appreciate feedback. **

***** Title and quote are taken directly from the song 'Beautiful Trash' by Lanu. No copyright infringement intended.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Beautiful Trash**

_You better batten down your hatches_

_Now I lost my magic._

_4AM, I think I might just stay up all night_

_If you got a light._

**Part 2/3**

6.

He feels the guilt, acknowledges it, even calls himself a bastard in the safety of his own head.

He tries to tell himself that he hadn't meant to hurt her, that it was his roundabout way of finding out why she hadn't gone home for the holidays, but he can't. He doesn't know why she reacted the way she did, but he doesn't investigate either. He's suddenly positive that he doesn't want to know.

She doesn't come back, and he doesn't seek her out. He leaves her experiments exactly as they were, right down to the cauldron in the sink.

The holidays dwindle away and soon the castle is full of cheerful children again. It makes him angrier than usual because all the while her words spin about in his head. Rise above their expectations?

Hadn't he done that already?

They'd all expected him to be a turncoat. They had looked at each other, shouted the requisite 'I knew it!' and 'I told you so'. While it was exactly what Dumbledore had wanted it hadn't made it any easier for him to swallow. And when it had finally been revealed that they'd been wrong about him all along, what had happened?

Nothing.

Nothing had happened, and nothing had changed.

And grow up? She who was twenty years younger than him, telling him to _grow up_?

How _dare_ she?

7.

Her anger fades quickly, and her hurt follows shortly thereafter.

There's a little bit of guilt that settles in the pit of her stomach by the time the new semester starts. It's irrational guilt, of course, because there's no way anyone in their right mind could say that she's in the wrong. It's there because she knows that he doesn't know, or at least he didn't at the time.

Her parents would never be coming back, a fact that she rarely advertised to others. Shame held her tongue. Memory charms of that depth were irreversible but she hadn't known that at the time. The Know-It-All had rushed into a solution for their safety and hadn't looked at all the facts. She'd only tried to reverse it once. When her father's nose had started to bleed she'd put her wand away and left, taking all traces of her presence.

Pushing away her self-pitying thoughts, she busies herself by watching him. It's a testament to his state of mind that he doesn't notice. He only shows up for the evening meal, the one he's required to attend by contract, and even then he barely eats. He's as thin as he ever was and she wonders if this is simply how he is, if he's always been like this.

Sadness filters in, quickly followed by pity.

He'd just _love_ that if he knew.

Good thing she has no intention of telling him.

Weeks drift by, classes are taught, and assignments are marked. She notices that he doesn't really interact with anyone outside of the classroom and wonders how many words he speaks to his colleagues on any given day. Or how many they spare for him.

He's existing, she realises, not living.

She finds herself wanting to reach out to him, even though she knows she's likely to have her hand bitten off. Despite that, she makes her way down to his lab one evening in early March. He'd probably sneer about her Gryffindor-ish tendencies and turn her out on her arse if he knew what she was about, but she has the excuse of her experiments to fall back on.

He's there when she enters and his shock is plain to see for a brief moment before he files it away.

"What do you want?"

She doesn't say anything, merely walks over to the bench that she had been using. When she finds that her experiments are still there, some parts of them under a stasis charm that she hadn't cast, she smiles. Her eyes are drawn to the sink, where she had thrown the hot cauldron that day. She finds it sitting there. The only thing different about it being that he'd Vanished the ruined potion. Without a word, she picks it up and places it on the metal frame, poking her wand underneath it to light a blue flame.

They work in silence for a while, nothing but the sounds of her chopping, and the scratch of his quill to fill the room. She knows he won't break it, just as she knows that she has to.

"They don't remember me," she says quietly. He hears her. All sounds of his movement cease to be. "I sent them away the summer before that...that year. They wouldn't have gone willingly, so I took the option away from them. They're Monica and Wendell Wilkins now. They live in Austrailia, just outside of Sydney. Monica runs a daycare, and Wendell is a florist. They have no children."

She reminds herself to breathe. In. Out. Shred the daisy root finely with the tip of the blade. In. Out.

His voice, when it comes, is soft and unsurprising. His words, however, cause her to nearly cut into her finger.

"You did what had to be done. You protected them. There is no shame in it."

She turns and looks at him, finds him bent over the other bench, quill in hand, eyes on her. She smiles softly, blinking furiously.

His gaze falls down to her mouth, before he looks away.

8.

It takes him way too long to figure out what she's up to. By the time he realises, it's too far gone to stop.

At some point, she took it upon herself to become his friend.

Or something.

The dreary weather of early spring bleeds into the warmth of the approaching summer and with it comes Hermione Granger, great badgering, nagging woman of extraordinary proportions.

She tells him to eat more, and brings him food when he doesn't show up for meals.

She teases him, and laughs at her own jokes.

She poked him in the ribs once and discovered that it makes him jump. It quickly becomes her main defence against his sarcastic commentary.

Her hand is constantly touching him; his arm, his shoulder, his back, his hair. It sets him on edge even as he comes to expect it, to _want _it.

One evening she drags him outside, insistent upon showing him something growing at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. When they reach the forest in question he realises that he's been duped. She takes his arm and forces him to walk her around the grounds in the dying light.

She asks for his opinion on her experiments and tricks him into doing things for her by throwing out lines like 'Well, if you're so bloody good, why don't _you_ show me how?'

She tells him her thoughts about everything from her students and classes to the doings of her moronic friends and their torrid affairs.

She comes to see him every day, even if it's only for long enough to tell him that she has to supervise a detention that night and can't make it.

She invades his life, every aspect of it.

And he lets her.

9.

"Severus, we're out of Baneberry and I think these Shrivelfigs have gone bad."

"I know," he tells her distractedly, his eyes on his cauldron. "I shall go this weekend and replenish the stock."

"Are you going to Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley?"

He casts her a look straight out of her childhood. It's the one that says he thinks she's stupid.

"Diagon Alley, of course."

"Good, I was hoping you'd say that. Do you mind if I come with you? I have a couple of things I need to get myself."

"I am not following you about while you go on a shopping spree," he tells her.

"No? Shame. I had planned on having you carry all my bags for me."

She earns herself another look. It makes her grin.

"I need some new quills and ink, I'm almost out of red," she says with a wry twist of her lips. He snorts.

"I can pick up some extra food for Crooks, stop at Flourish and Blotts for a quick peek, and then Madam Malkins."

"Madam Malkins?" he echoes warily.

She smiles. "I need a few sets of robes. I burnt a hole through my blue ones with that bubotuber pus, remember? May as well get more than one while I'm there, don't you think?"

"No," he tells her, his tone invoking no room for debate. "I am not going _clothes shopping_ with you."

10.

"What do you think about this colour?" she asks him, holding up a set of pewter gray robes against her body.

They're cut in an older style, the kind that Muggles consider medieval. It would fit her like a glove, hugging her body tightly until it flared out at the hip. The delicate silver chain that serves as a decorative kind of belt would accentuate her waist. He cannot help picturing her in it.

"Do you want to be dressed like a cauldron?" he asks her, pushing away his thoughts of her body.

She purses her lips and glares at him. "Cauldrons are round, you git. You don't tell a woman things like that."

He shrugs nonchalantly and she tosses it defiantly in the 'keep' pile, scowling at him while she does it.

"What about this one?"

This set is more modern with many layers and long sleeves that would get in the way of brewing. The colour is a deep, beautiful navy blue that seems to shimmer slightly as the she moves. Once more, he finds himself picturing her in it.

She'd look beautiful in them. She'd look more than beautiful in the gray ones. Hell, he thinks she looks beautiful in what she is already wearing.

How the fuck had he let this happen?

Clearing his throat, he stands up from the chair she'd pushed him into when they entered. "I am the wrong person to ask. It may have escaped your notice but I am not fond of colour in my wardrobe. If you will excuse me, I will await you outside."

He flees then, hearing the sales girl's commiserating _tisk_ sound as he leaves Hermione huffing irritably. Stepping outside, he walks the short distance to the edge of the building and presses his back against the cool brick. People pass by, not many but enough, and cast dubious looks his way. He is infamous, of course, and everyone knows who he is the moment they see him. Thankfully, no one approaches or says anything to him. He would be poorly prepared to handle a conflict at the moment.

He is too busy trying not to panic.

***** Thanks for all the positive feedback! It's great to hear that most people are happy with the plot and writing style.**

***** I admit to being inspired by another fic from the Suits fandom. If you haven't watched Suits yet I have to question what exactly it is that you're doing with your life. **

***** Just a reminder that this is a 3 part story and will be complete with the next chapter. **


	3. Chapter 3

**Beautiful Trash**

_I wanted to take you_

_And make you my all_

_I was no good then._

_I was smoking alone._

_Oh, beautiful trash._

**Part 3/3**

11.

"Severus? Is everything all right?"

"Why would anything be wrong?"

"Well, you've been...antsy is the only word for it," she tells him, her eyes sweeping over his form as he fiddles with his tankard. It had been unbelievably difficult to convince him to stop for lunch in the Leaky Cauldron and she had briefly wondered if she would have to drag him, kicking and screaming.

"I am not."

"You are."

"Are we actually going to have this argument?"

"You are the one who insists on arguing."

She arches both her eyebrows at him. "You do realise that sounds incredibly petulant."

"Granger, if I wanted your opinion, I'd ask for it."

She sighs and reaches across the table, placing her hand on his. He freezes up, something he hasn't done in a long time, but she puts it down to being in public together for the first time and ignores it.

"Severus, please. What's bothering you?"

He looks at her warily and then down to their hands, but he doesn't pull away. She waits, trying very hard not to push him. Finally, he sighs softly.

"I am unused to being outside the grounds. I find myself cautious of the public reaction, though aside from the looks I must admit it has gone better than expected."

She frowns and there's something niggling in the back of her mind that tells her he's not giving her the full truth, but she decides not to go there. Instead, she curls her fingers around his hand.

"Severus, fuck them."

He blinks and looks up at her sharply. "I beg your pardon?"

She smiles sweetly. "You heard me_. Fuck. Them_. They don't like you? Why do you care? It's far easier for people to judge when they weren't there, when they weren't involved." She squeezes his hand. "You did what you had to do. You protected us. There's no shame in it."

He looks away from her, clearly recognising his own words. "It's a lot easier said than done, Granger."

Her smile turns sad and she reaches for him with her other hand, wrapping his in the warmth of her two. "I know it is," she agrees. "But you know what they say?"

She waits until he meets her eyes, his expression tired beyond words. "What do they say?" he asks.

"That the best revenge is living well."

He snorts softly. "I don't know how."

"Why don't you start with just being happy?"

"At the risk of sounding redundant as well as maudlin, I don't know how," he says, finally pulling his hand out from between hers. He sits back, eyes on his pint.

"Do you know why I accepted the position at Hogwarts?" she asks suddenly, leaning forward.

"Flitwick retired."

"Because I was unhappy at the Ministry, and I needed a change."

"And are you happy now?" he challenges.

She cocks her head and thinks about it for a second. "Yes. I am. Not incandescently, but it will do for now."

"Again, easier said than done, Granger."

She leans farther forward so that almost all of her upper body is on the table, trying to get his attention. "Nothing worth having ever is."

He snorts and looks away from her. "You seem to be full of clichés this evening."

"But they're true."

He says nothing.

Reaching out, she snags his hand once more, twining her fingers through his. "Here's another for you: you'll never know if you don't try. You'll remain unhappy and stuck until the day you die. Is that what you want?"

Still, he says nothing. But he looks at her. He looks, and slowly he shakes his head.

12.

He doesn't know what to do with her.

Funny. He's felt that way ever since he found her invading his lab space.

She wears the pewter grey robes, pairing them with voluminous black top robes not unlike his own. The additional layer hides the fact that the grey material clings to her upper body, but he _knows_ that it must and he finds himself looking for it. Instead, he catches glimpses of the delicate silver chain that hangs about her waist.

He doesn't know what to do with himself.

Nights previously spent either marking, overseeing detentions, or doing his own leisure reading are now used up with endless pacing, muttering, and thoughts that chase themselves around his head. He thinks of her, but he also thinks of her terribly, terribly cliché words.

For all the fact that they could have been taken from a flowery greeting card, they ring with truth.

And he wants it.

But what could it possibly yield? Hadn't he done that before? He'd _tried_ to branch out, to be more than Professor Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts. It hadn't worked last time; no one had wanted him, and what was to say that anything had changed in the last half-dozen years?

He paces. He mutters. He thinks.

Occasionally, he swears.

She brings out the best in him, apparently.

Despite his misgivings, he finds a quill in his hand and several blank sheets of parchment before him.

Pushing aside doubt, he dips the sharpened tip into a fresh pot of ink and begins writing.

13.

"Why are you here, Granger?"

"Hermione."

His brow furrows and her lips twitch in a smile. "My name is Hermione," she clarifies. "_Severus_."

"Why are you here, _Hermione_?" he asks again with a pointed look.

She shrugs and scrapes the powdered beetle eyes out of her mortar and into her cauldron. "I needed a change from the Ministry, I was going nowhere but brain dead there, and I find that I quite like teaching. I'm not sure I want to do it forever but...it will do for now."

"Not at Hogwarts, witch. Here. In my lab."

She smirks at him. "I like potions. And I like you."

The look he favours her with could wither stone. "No one likes me, Granger."

"Hermione," she corrects. "And people don't like you because you're a git to them."

"I'm a git to you."

She laughs at that, because it's mostly true. "Yes, but sometimes you forget to be a git, and then you're actually quite nice, Severus."

"_What_?" He stops the marking he had been doing, the marking that could have been done in his office at the desk that is actually meant for it.

"You are," she grins. He almost looks offended. With one hand she stirs her potion, with the other she begins ticking off her points. "You help me when I need it, and for all the times you call me stupid, you never actually insult my intelligence. You bring me tea without being asked, and I know you started getting the Green blend that I like when you found out that I hate Earl Grey. You adjusted the height of your work benches because I'm shorter than you, and you purposely ordered the ingredients that I needed even though you don't usually stock them. Not to mention the fact that you let me work in your lab when you _knew_ that Minerva had purposefully told me I could work here without your permission." She looks over her shoulder at him. "Oh, and you always pull my chair out at dinner. Shall I continue?"

Where she expects him to be flummoxed, she instead finds him thoughtful. Chin propped on his hand, he's stares off into the distance and, presumably, thinks about what she's said. Taking the opportunity granted to her, she watches him without concern that he'll catch her and become defensive.

Somewhere along the line she grew fond of him. It was a slow realisation, but after finding herself looking forward to her lab time with a nervous sort of energy she had to acknowledge it for what it is. She doesn't find him handsome, exactly, because he isn't, but nor is he the hideous man of her childhood. Perception and time, she realises, can do wonders. The more time she spends with him the less she cares that he has frown lines around his mouth and greasy hair. She's come to enjoy the fact that he smells of soap, that his voice is rich, deep, and smooth, that he's equal measures of sarcastic and intelligent. Most of all, she's discovered that she wants to know more.

"So you're telling me that you just decided to come down to my lab on the belief that I'm not actually as much of an arsehole as I've always shown myself to be?" he asks finally, doubt in his voice.

"No. I had experiments to do. Discovering that you're secretly a nice guy was just a perk."

His eyebrow arches. "You expect me to believe that you're actually running experiments? You're a Charms Mistress."

"Charms can be used with potions!" she protests and he scoffs derisively.

"Your experiment is done, isn't it?" he asks, looking pointedly at her cauldron.

One side of her mouth curves up into a devious smile. "Maybe. Maybe not."

14.

The envelope seems to burn him from the pocket of his robes where he'd secreted it away the moment the owl dropped it into his breakfast. He rarely recieves mail and he hadn't wanted any undue questions when he didn't know who it was from, or what it would say.

Quickly, he finishes up with his coffee, leaving his plate mostly untouched. He hadn't intended on coming to breakfast that morning but found himself there nonetheless. Hermione was not present and thoughts on her whereabouts had occupied him until that envelope.

He has only made it a few steps into the Entrance Hall when he gives up on pretense and pulls the parchment from his pocket. A quick look at the seal tells him exactly who it is from and he feels a jolt of nerves shoot through his gut, the like of which he hasn't experienced since he was a lad. He breaks the seal and quickly skims the letter, hardly daring to believe the words.

Doubt had wormed its way in as the weeks slipped by and he heard nothing from any of his several inquiries, not even a flat out refusal. And now this.

He has to find her.

His wand is in his hand in a heartbeat. "Point me," he tells it, watching it spin on his flat palm. She is outside.

The air is cool and crisp, a hint of warmth in the April air, as he stands on the steps leading up to the castle. His height and her hair is an advantage, it doesn't take him long to find her, walking slowly about the edge of the lake. He sets off for her, robes billowing in his wake.

"Severus?" She sees him long before he reaches her and there is a hint of concern in her tone.

He doesn't say anything. Instead, he holds the letter out to her. With a frown, she takes it and begins to read. He watches her face carefully and there is no mistaking the moment she realises exactly what it is that she's reading. She looks up at him, a smile fit to split her face.

"St. Mungo's, Severus!?"

She makes an inarticulate sound, not unlike a squeal, and launches herself at him. He lets out a soft grunt as they make contact but she doesn't seem to notice as she does her level best to strangle him.

Her actions startle a laugh out of him and he wraps his arms around her, hugging her tighter to his body.

"Severus, what are you laughing about!?" she demands, pulling back to look at him. Her smile is infectious.

"You," he confesses. "What was that sound you just made?"

"Shut up," she shoves him playfully, looking back down at the paper in her hand. "Medicinal potions research? Oh, gods, Severus, this is fantastic!" All of a sudden, her smile drops and she frowns. "Wait, is this something you actually want to do, or are you just doing it because you're good at it?"

He thinks about it for a second, and then shrugs. "I am not wholly sure. I do know that it is time for a change, however, and this cannot be worse than teaching rudimentary potions to a bunch of brats."

Her grin returns with force and before he can do a thing about it, she reaches up with both hands and pulls him down for a kiss.

It's hard, their faces press against each other, and he barely has time to register what's happening, before she pulls back, still grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

"I'm happy for you, Severus."

15.

With a heavy sigh, Hermione flops gracelessly into the chair by her cold fireplace. The hectic rush of the final month of the year always leaves her exhausted, never more so than when she became a teacher. It makes her laugh to think back on her days as a student and how harried she had felt then. She hadn't really understood the meaning of the word until she'd been faced with several hundred final essays to mark. She lets out another sigh, her eyes roving over her chambers once more, looking for any odd bits that need to be put away or packed.

Her bags lay in wait next to the door, ready for her yearly trip. She could have waited a bit longer, left in a couple of days, but as it always happens she finds herself nearly chomping at the bit to get moving. The Hogwarts Express had only left an hour before, but she is ready to be gone.

A knock at the door forces her into movement and her suspicions are confirmed when she opens the door to find Severus on the other side. She smiles and steps aside for him to join her.

"Severus! I was going to come find you before I left but you've saved me a trip!"

He seems slightly nervous. It is nothing overt, nothing to anyone who hadn't spent months upon months in his company, but the way his fingers tap out a rhythm on his thighs and the fact that he cannot seem to look at her for long give him away.

"I thought I would walk you to the Apparition point, if you do not mind," he tells her, a question in his voice.

"That sounds lovely, but I will be taking a Portkey," she says, pulling out an empty plastic water bottle from the pocket of her robes.

"Ah. I see. Well, then I wish you a good holiday."

"Severus." She reaches out for him, grabbing his forearm as he moves to turn away. "I wanted to ask you a question."

"What is it?"

She lifts the hand holding the Portkey. "Every year I go to Australia. I...I go to see them. They don't know I'm about but...I usually stop in and see them for a bit before finding something terribly touristy and mundane to do with myself instead of wallowing and crying my eyes out because, really, what good is that going to do anyone, right? And I know it probably comes off a bit stalker-esque but I really just hang about Dad's shop for a bit, just so I can see them and..." she trails off, realising that she's babbling. Severus is watching her intently though, his expression genuinely interested, and she takes a deep breath before going on. "What I'm trying to say is that I was hoping you might want to come with me this year."

A light frown creases his brow. "Don't you want to see them on your own?"

She smiles, a bit sadly, and shakes her head. "Actually, no. I hate going alone. I...I could really use the company."

"Potter or Weasley don't—"

"I'm asking you, Severus."

His eyes search her face, perhaps looking for sincerity, before dropping to the hand on his forearm. Without looking at her, he answers. "I think I would like that. I have never been."

Her relief is so strong that she immediately steps into his personal space and embraces him. Since the day she had bodily thrown herself at him their personal contact had been steadily increasing, though there had been no repeat of the rushed kiss, and she enjoyed the fact that there was no hesitation in Severus when he returns her affection. His arms settle comfortably around her shoulders as she presses her face against his chest, inhaling the scent of clean laundry and the warmth of his skin.

"Thank you," she murmurs, squeezing him ever tighter.

"It is hardly an inconvenience," he says and the sound of his voice resonates through his chest

Pulling back just enough to see his face, she smiles brilliantly at him. "Still. It means a lot to me."

"To me, as well. I could really use a tan."

She blinks at him for a second before a laugh rips out of her. "Severus Snape! Did you just make a joke?"

His lips curl ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth. "What _are_ you blathering about, witch? You've lost all sense."

Still laughing, it seems completely natural to lean up on to her toes when he dips his head towards her. Their lips meet at the same time that he tangles his hand into her hair, the pads of his fingers sliding along her scalp. His kiss is hesitant, chaste, and sweet. Slipping her arms around his neck, she changes the angle and nips gently at his lips. The sound of his light chuckle makes her smile against his mouth.

"Is there more where that came from?" he asks softly.

Instead of answering, she pulls him down and claims his mouth once more.

***** I am entertaining the idea of continuing this but after a bit of a jump in time. Thoughts? At the same time, I've been issued a challenge along the lines of 'I bet you can't do a crossover of SS/HG and Beauty & the Beast without it being corny'. I'm sorely tempted to try but also pretty sure that I'd fail. We shall see.**

***** Many thanks for all of the feedback! I always appreciate it when you take the time to leave your thoughts. Cheers! **


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